Singapore Airlines Asks Employees for Ideas on Efficiencies During Business Revamp

Kyunghee Park, Bloomberg

- Jan 29, 2018 3:00 pm

Skift Take

Tapping into your own company’s brain trust is a smart move. But job cuts might be looming — so no pressure to come up with a big company-saving idea.

— Sarah Enelow-Snyder

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Singapore Airlines Ltd., the premium carrier that’s undergoing a business revamp to fend off competition from Gulf airlines and budget operators, is turning to its employees for ideas.

Southeast Asia’s biggest carrier is setting up a lab and encouraging workers across its group — including SilkAir and Scoot — to submit proposals that would help boost efficiency in its operations, Chief Executive Officer Goh Choon Phong told reporters Monday in Singapore. The company is also working with research agencies to use big data to meet the goal.

“The whole idea about creating a digital innovation lab is an important step,” Goh said. “We want our staff to be able to experiment with those ideas and try to see whether we can get some concrete result out of it. The mindset change here is that we as an organization must also be willing to accept that many of this may not work.”

Selected proposals will receive funds of S$5,000 ($3,800) to test their suggestions further with help from internal or external parties, including startups.

After reporting a surprise loss in the quarter through March last year, the first in five years, Goh kicked off steps to tackle costs and announced in June that the transformation plan may include job cuts. While he has revealed few details of the revamp, he is seeking to better position the group for “long-term sustainable growth.”

Singapore Air agreed to collaborate with National University of Singapore and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research on solutions using big data and artificial intelligence in areas such as aircraft maintenance to enable the airline to take timely steps to lower cost and flight delays, it said in a statement Monday.

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Photo Credit: Singapore Airlines Ltd., the premium carrier that’s undergoing a business revamp to fend off competition from Gulf airlines and budget operators, is turning to its employees for ideas. Bloomberg